Fallujah: All the Makings of a War Crime

by Tony Kevin

. . . Falluja is now to be brought to heel by overwhelming military power. As I
write this, the US attack on the city has begun. The message to Falluja from
the US armed forces in Iraq and from Allawi was brutally simple: submit now
to Baghdad's authority or face attack. . . .

What I believe is then likely to be done to Falluja will be a war crime and
crime against humanity, morally indefensible by any civilised standard or
for that matter, by the Statute of the International Criminal Court (to
which, conveniently, neither the US nor Iraqi Government adheres).

This will be no neat, surgical strike. To get the measure of this, think of
the Warsaw rising in 1944, or the Russian Army's destruction of the Chechen
capital, Grozny. In 1999 this already battered city (of originally 400,000
people) was finally destroyed by massive Russian bombardment. Today,
insurgents still fight it out with Russian troops among the ruins.

Eighteen months ago, before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Falluja was a
living city of 300,000 people. Now - depopulated of most of its civilians by
intimidation and fear - what is left looks like it is about to be blasted
out of existence, simply as a demonstration of overwhelming US power in
Iraq. . . .

The truth is that this city, which has become a symbol of Sunni-Iraqi
political resistance to the occupiers, is to be made an example of, to deter
others. The message the siege of Falluja sends is brutally simple: resist us
and we will destroy you. It is the same message that the Wehrmacht sent in
Warsaw in 1944, and the Russian Army in Grozny in 1999.

This attack will also violate the rules of war and the Geneva conventions in
having grossly indiscriminate effects on civilians and civilian homes and
infrastructure. . . .

Eventually, the attackers will flatten the city and kill everyone that still
resists in it. Falluja will be the Iraqi people's Masada, and it will sow
seeds of deep anti-Western hatred in the Middle East for decades to come.

The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, understands all this, in pleading for
a negotiated solution. And as usual, Washington is summarily ignoring his
pleas. . . .

An unnamed US military commander in the tightening military ring around
Falluja proudly boasted (as heard on ABC Radio yesterday) that this battle
will go down in US military history as another Hue. Indeed it will - who can
forget the wholesale artillery destruction of that sacred, historic
Vietnamese city? "We had to destroy it in order to save it" was the line at
the time. . . .